North Korea To US: We Are Ready To Use Nuclear Weapons At Any Time

Juliegrace Brufke

North Korea said its main nuclear facility, Yongbyon, is up and running and the country is ready to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States at any time.

In a statement released to state-run North Korean State News Agency Tuesday, the country said it’s bolstering Pyongyang’s weapon supply in both “quality and quantity,” touting the advancements will “guarantee the reliability of the nuclear deterrent in every way.”

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright told CNN the country may already have 10 to 15 nuclear weapons in its possession.

“If the U.S. and other hostile forces persistently seek their reckless hostile policy towards the DPRK and behave mischievously, the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is fully ready to cope with them with nuclear weapons any time,” the director of the North Korean Atomic Energy Institute said.

On Monday, Communist leader Kim Jong-un’s regime announced it’s readying to launch satellites using ballistic-missile technology in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the party’s ruling on Oct. 10, a clear violation of U.N. sanctions.

“There are multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that require North Korea to suspend all activities related to their ballistic missile program and re-establish a moratorium on missile launches, stop conducting any launches using ballistic missile technology, and abandon its ballistic missile program in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner,” State Department Press Secretary John Kirby said at a press briefing Monday.

The country says it is in the final stages of developing a miniaturized nuclear weapons that could be loaded on a long-range missile, a claim American experts are skeptical of.

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